News

Jahi McMath family spends first day of 2014 searching for doctor to help get teen to New York facility

By Katie Nelson

Oakland Tribune

Posted:
01/01/2014 05:38:38 PM PST

Updated:
01/02/2014 12:49:03 PM PST

OAKLAND -- The family of Jahi McMath spent the first day of the New Year continuing to desperately search for a doctor who would be willing to perform two surgeries that would allow the brain-dead teen to be transferred to a care facility in New York.

Jahi, who needs feeding and breathing tubes to be taken to New Beginnings Community Center in Medford, N.Y., has been on a ventilator at Children's Hospital Oakland since mid-December following serious complications from a tonsil surgery and two other procedures to remove throat and nasal tissue.

If Jahi can get to New Beginnings, the facility director said she would be cared for around the clock by licensed nursing staff and licensed respiratory therapists. The facility would also hire a pediatrician who would accept Jahi as his patient. An air ambulance company has stated that it would be willing to fly Jahi from Oakland to Long Island for roughly $31,910.

However, hospital spokesman Sam Singer said Wednesday that three separate courts have denied requests by Chris Dolan, the McMath family lawyer, to have someone implement the tracheotomy line to help Jahi breathe and a gastric tube to provide nutrition.

But Dolan said the courts have only said they would not order the hospital to perform the surgeries and that despite claims the family's efforts are in vain, there is still time for Jahi.

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"This is no trick; this is life and death," Dolan said in a statement Wednesday. "Justice is no hoax, and constitutional rights are not a game."

The family has pleaded on Facebook and Twitter for help to find a physician willing to perform both surgeries for Jahi, but so far no one has stepped forward. Doctors at Children's Hospital have refused to perform either procedure, saying it is unethical to operate on a dead body.

Wednesday has remained fairly quiet for Jahi and her family, according to hospital spokeswoman Melinda Krigel, who said there have been no updates in the teen's case.

This is a far cry from Tuesday, when the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network said publicly for the first time that it has been helping Jahi's family for weeks to find a place to transfer her.

The news came the same day as an announcement from the California Department of Public Health, stating it would be opening an investigation into the hospital's handling of the teen after her surgeries and the ensuing complications that left her brain-dead.